The present invention relates to a device and method for securing and transporting a shipment of goods and more particularly to a device and method for securing and transporting nursery items, such as plants, flowers, trees, bushes, perennials and other similar items.
Historically, growers maintain centralized farms where the nursery goods are cultivated and grown. When an order is placed by a customer for the purchase of nursery items, the grower must ship products to the customer. Traditionally, large trucks are used to transport these nursery items. To minimize the cost and the time associated with delivery, each truck is loaded with goods for several customers. The trucks travel nationwide, making numerous stops along the way. It is not uncommon for the nursery items to remain on the truck for several days or weeks. Accordingly, the nursery items must be secured to ensure that the items remain intact during shipping.
The conventional method of shipping nursery items has been to use lumber to secure the goods in the truck. A known nursery loading device is shown in FIG. 1. According to known loading techniques, wooden boards 10 are attached horizontally along the length of the truck body 12 to provide a wood lining for the truck. Additional wooden boards 14 are attached vertically at intermittent intervals along the length of the truck body 12. To stack nursery items 16, wooden shelves 18 are built that can withstand the weight and the water drainage from the plants. To prevent the nursery items from shifting, a wooden gate 20, shown in FIG. 2, is built and used as a barrier to restrain the items. Wooden gate 20 is positioned in front of the loaded nursery items in a perpendicular relationship to the wood lining 10, 14 attached to the side walls of the truck. The attachment of the gate 20 to the wood lining creates a barrier that prevents the nursery items from shifting in the truck.
The wooden gate is usually built by aligning five to ten 4xe2x80x3 by 1xe2x80x3 wooden boards 22 parallel to each other and connecting the parallel boards 22 together using additional 4xe2x80x3 by 1xe2x80x3 wooden boards 24 which are attached perpendicularly to the parallel boards. The gate 20 is then attached to wood lining 10, 14 on the truck walls 12 using known fasteners.
The cost of the traditional methods of shipping nursery items is high. The grower bears the cost of purchasing the lumber with which the wooden lining, wooden shelves, and wooden gates are fabricated. The cost of labor increases as the laborers are required to build these wooden structures for every shipment. Additionally, the attachment of the wood to the truck body can cause permanent damage to the truck walls for which the grower is responsible. Once the items arrive at the customer""s location, the customer bears the cost of the labor for deconstructing the wooden structures. This task can be a difficult one requiring the use of crowbars to detach and tear down the wooden gates, shelves and lining. The customer also bears the cost of the disposal of the dunnage.
In recent years, disposal fees have increased causing the customers to be concerned with the amount of lumber that is used in the loading method. Moreover, customers have been concerned with the wasteful use of materials that are not recyclable. These concerns have given rise to a need for an improved shipping technique that reduces the amount of required lumber in the loading method. Yet, it is still necessary to provide sufficient structural support for securing the nursery items during shipment such that the customer does not receive damaged goods. The growers have also been concerned with the rising cost of lumber, and the corresponding rise in the cost of known shipping techniques. Reducing the amount of lumber used in loading shipments will reduce the costs of shipping for both the growers and the customers and customer satisfaction will result in increased sales. Accordingly, it is desirable to provide an improved loading technique that reduces the amount of lumber used, and replaces the lumber with material that is deconstructed and disposed of easily.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a secure means of transporting nursery items while reducing the amount of lumber utilized in the shipping method.
It is another object of the present invention to simplify the unloading process such that the customer""s costs associated with labor and disposal fees are minimized.
It is yet another object of the present invention to utilize material in the loading process that can be reused or recycled.
It is yet another object of the present invention to utilize a material that does not damage the truck body and does not result in additional cleaning charges from the carrier.
Accordingly, a device and method of loading nursery items on a truck is disclosed that offers greater value to customers by simplifying the transport and unloading of nursery item products, while also eliminating the nuisance and disposal cost of wood framing that has ben used to brace loads in the past.
One embodiment of the present invention is a device and method of loading nursery items on a truck wherein a portion of a first panel of high tensile strength sheet material is adhered to a first wall of a truck""s storage compartment and a portion of a second panel of high tensile strength sheet material is adhered to a second wall of the truck in mirror relationship to the first panel. Various nursery items are packed in the storage compartment between the first panel and the second panel. A gate is positioned in front of the packed nursery items between the first and second panels. The second ends of the first and second panels are secured together in a tensile state such that the gate and the nursery items are securely held in place.
The loading technique of the present invention allows a reduction in the amount of lumber required by as much as 95%, reducing waste disposal and fees. Additionally, the process of unloading is simplified because the deconstruction only requires a pair of scissors, in place of the crowbar required for the prior techniques. Furthermore, the gate of the present invention can be recycled and used for other purposes.